There are two direct parallels called to mind in Mark 2:13-17, a story that describes Jesus walking along the sea of Galilee, encountering a crowd, singling out an individual, and being called out for those whom he is associating with and for his words/actions reflecting an offence in light of Torah faithfulness.

The first call back is in fact the section that just precedes this in 2: 1-12. We just finished reading in 2:2 a story defined by the crowd “gathering” around Jesus. Once again we are in a story where the crowd is “gathering” around Jesus (2:13). This is then interrupted by the arrival of an extant or outside individual. In the case of 2:1-12 it was the paralyzed man. In the case of 2:13-17 it is Levi son of Alphaeus. In both cases the scandal revolves around association with what is called sinners, an act which would have left a Torah faithful adherent unclean simply by coming into contact.

What is equally curious here is to recognize how the term sinner is being applied in these cases. For the paralytic, sin and sickness are intertwined. In the case of Levi, sin and tax collecting were intertwined. Which should indicate that however we make our way into this discussion about sin it is likely that our defintion needs to be broadened. To make sense of why this categorical defintion of “sinner” matters in these stories we need to step outside the narrow paramaters of “moral action.”

This first parallel is also found in Jesus’ response to the scribes (2:16) asking “why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners.” Jesus says in verse 17, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” In the previous story we heard Jesus respond to the scibes concerns by saying, “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven, or to say stand up and take your mat and walk?” Once again, the line blurs when it comes to this word “sinners,” with our attention immediately conjuring up this portrait of a literal sick man (a paralyitic) being healed of his sickness. And yet here this same conceptualization is applied to the tax collectors.

The second parallel reaches back to 1:16-20. In verse 16 Jesus is passing along the Sea of Galilee and says to the fishermen, come follow me. Here in verses 13-14 he once again is walking along the sea of Galilee, encounters a tax collector and invites him to come “follow me.” Whereas the teaching of the crowd precedes this in 13-17, the teaching of the crowd follows this encounter in 1:21. But here is the real striking part of this parallel. In Mark 1:23-24 it is “an unclean spirit” that opposes Jesus. In chapter 2, both of the parallel stories are dealing with Jesus’ association with “the unclean” while the scribes are the ones opposing Jesus. In the case of the unclean spirit, it knows who Jesus is which sparks a response declaring “have you come to destroy us?”

This raises an interesting question. If Mark wants us as readers to associate the scribes with this portrait of the unclean spirit being cast out, what precisely is this association looking to do and say in the context of this Gospel? This is simply my own reflections, but I found that stated concern of the unclean spirit that Jesus has come to destroy them a possible entry point into exploring that question. The unclean spirits is obviously speaking on a cosmic level, and yet somehow this seems to trickle down into the unspoken fears of the scribes. And it makes sense. The backdrop of the world Jesus has entered into is both Roman occupation and rule (read: the power of Empire) and a persisting exile. Torah faithfulness in this regard isn’t a matter of individual salvation built on legalism, as in people seeking to do good and thus be accepted (Edwards unfortunately straddles a line here in perpetuating this falsehood in his commentary). Rather, its concerns reach much broader. Here Torah faithfulness is directly attached to Torah fulfilment. What’s on the line is the promise of new creation itself. Torah faithfulness is not simply a question of some necessary action that brings about God’s work, nor is it simply about being left out of God’s anticipated work, it’s about whether this hope can be made known at all against the backdrop of Empire and its idols. Edwards does not a nice job in his commentary of outlining why “tax collectors” would be indicative of a marriage to Empire and thus become the subject of such opposition. This also has the ability to create the appropriate level of empathy for the position and concerns of the scribes. In some sense, when seen through the lens of Torah, to locate Torah faithfunless within association with “uncleaness” is to reiterate the terms of exile and the Roman Empire. The concern here could be palpable- have you come to destory us (yes in the case of the unclean spirits and Empire, known as the enslaving Powers) or to liberate us by fulfilling the Torah (yes, in the case of the scribes concern). It’s just a question of how this happens in the person and work of Jesus. This fits with the simple observation that in saying Jesus came not for the righteous for the sick is not framed as an invitation to  the scribes as “the sick,” but rather is redirecting the narrative towards the markings of the fulfilliment. In Jewish terms this is indicative of the expected answer to the problem of exile (the return from exile which inaugerates the kingdom of God) which marks the movement of the then inaugerated Kingdom of God into the whole of the world. The distinction being made is always about whether we can find this inaugeration in Jesus or not, and that distinction is always framed against which words are bound to which story- the story of God or the story of the Powers. Which is precisely why the identity of Jesus matters to Mark.

I don’t think the association here in Mark between the unclean spirits and the scribes is to make them synonymous. Rather it is to redirect the concern towards the inaugerating shape of the kingdom of God having arrived among them. In his commentary, James R. Edwards notes the obvious distinction between the fact that the scribes followed Jesus to the home where he ultimately reclines with these sinners, and yet Mark never uses the word “follow” in Jesus’ own words for those who oppose him. Rather it is used exclusively for those whom he calls. And it is this calling that over and over again becomes the means of revealing the how of this fulfilment in the scope of this “good news” proclomation. Here “sinners” reaches far beyond moral action and towards the larger narrative, which begins with the cosmic and moves into the particulars. It has to do with the state of things, not doing good or doing bad. Here righteousness reflects fulfillment not moral upstanding or works, and sinner is clearly associated with enslavement to the Powers who’s markings are Sin and Death and all of its association.

One last observation. In my previous thoughts on Mark 2:1-12 in this space I noted the parallel between the place of Jesus’ teaching in Mark 1 (the synagogue) and the house in Mark 2. This is clear temple imagery being evoked. This is once again made aware in Mark 2:13-17, and it will be accented by what follows in 2:18-28. The word for sitting that Mark uses for picturing Jesus in the home at the table is the word for “reclining.” Why does this matter? As Edwards notes, this word evokes who the host is. Jesus is in Levi’s home but he is presented as the host. This is thus painted once again as a temple, which Mark is about to break open as a portrait of the great anticipated wedding banquet or feast. And once again, this portrait is calling up that imagery of the temple with the inside dwelling place and the outer courts. And what this is indicative of is a picture of a purified space, which is what happens in entering the inner room. The forgiveness of sins becomes synonymous with that purifying act, the actual removing of the pollution of Sin and Death. Thus this isn’t a dismantling of some kind of Torah led legalism, it is actually the reconstituting of the Torah as a story of fulfillment in Jesus. The concerns for idolatry and exile fade away in this portrait of Jesus reclining at the table with “sinners” precisely because the space they are occupying has been transformed by Jesus. Here the enslaving Powers of Sin and Death have been destroyed. That’s the imagination I think Mark is conjuring up here.

(I’ve been gradually trying to force myself to get some of my project into a space where it can hold me accountable to doing something with it. I finished what I would call a rough draft of “my story” last year. So now I’ve been putting the very rough version in pieces in this space where it can continue to wrestle with it. This is another excerpt).

Glimpses of the invisible world. Seeing through the frosted window

This is how I describe attempts to recover the selective nature of my earliest memories. It is peer into the increasinbly  distanced, unfamiliar world that remains ever so evasive even as it remains somehow intimately familiar. Like crossing into that liminal space where the faintness of these memories becomes embodied by a narrative that appeasr to have been writing itself this whole time and which I am only now becoming aware. To tell ones story demands stepping into this space and not just treading carefully, but learning how to trust it.

The most fleeting of these memories remain the ones hardest to give myself over to completely, and  yet to question their validity is to also recognize their prevalance. I am reminded of a commentary on C.S. Lewis (Between Interpretation and Imagintion: C.S. Lewis and the Bible by Leslie Baynes) where Lewis’ obsession with the idea of Joy reveals that it is not the static details of our memory that matter, but the retaining of our experience of this moment that rings most true.

So perhaps this exercise of remembering the past is more a permission. A permission to trust that these memories which seem to hold my life in it’s ever so allusive hands do have the power to say something true about what reality is, about who I am, about my story and how it connects to the larger story of this world.

A particularly poignant and vivid memory that remains ingrained in my mind, perhaps the first that I can genuinely recall in such a form, evoking a world of 70’s era vinyl floors, floral wallpaper, and sitting around the old style kitchen booth with my bothers in our matching onesies with the then ukrainian north end neighborhood in the just beginning to blossom city of Winnipeg our outdoor playground.

It was a notable cloudy morning in a city known for its sun, and my younger brother and I were heading to school, my older brother already two steps removed from the equation having disappeared to that strange, bigger than life and somewhat haunting school down the road. This was a time when riding in the back of the station wagon without seat belts was normalized practice. My brother in pre-school, myself in grade 1, he was especially proud to be bringing his brand new hoola hoop to show off to the rest of the class. Nestled in the backwards back seat watching the world pass us by in reverse, this was an age of innocence and anticipation.

And of course the hoola hoop needed its own seat when the wagon has 2 more to spare.

As we both hopped out of the back and gave the obligatory wave goodbye to that old wagon, standing at the edge of the schoolyard as it turned back on to the main road, I can remember hearing the beginnings of the initially quiet and gradually elevating sobbing before I saw it. I turned around to see him looking back at that wagon as it started to pull off, tears filling his eyes- he had forgotten his hoola hoop in the middle seat.

Yes, I can still visualize this moment as though I’m standing there. I can feel the slight coolness of the early morning, the grey notes the clouds were casting on the grounds, the red brick of the old school walls. I can also say with a fair degree of confidence that this is the first time I remember feeling this kind of pain. That old familiar emotion- heartbreak. A moment that one might call a loss of innocence.

The only thing I could think of in this moment was to try and chase down that old wagon and somehow get it back. I tried, but this would prove to be of no avail. It was already gone. I was not fast enough. So I grabbed my sobbing brother and we walked towards the school. Perhaps a bit unbeknowst to me at the time, the feelings of this moment became rooted in this singular revelation that has seemed to stick with me ever since: reality had failed him. I wanted- check that, I wanted to be able to fix things in this moment. And I couldn’t. I felt, in a phrase, betrayed along with him, uncertain of how to reconcile this with the world which, up until then, had felt ordered and right.

If this seems a bit much to accept from a 7 year old kid, as though I’m overplaying a moment all these years later with unnecessary drama, it nevertheless is something that would come to define me. Or at least my awarness of how my brain works. For as small and ordinary as this experience was, it was equally a moment that set in play a lifelong wrestling with such tensions. How do I make sense of this world? How do I make sense of our place in it? How do I reconcile these seeming restless desires for rightness in a world that consistantly casts things into disarray?

How do I find my story within that.

All these years later and I’m not sure I’m any closer to an answer. I do, however, have perhaps a bit more clarity on what that struggle is and why it matters.

Bi Gan’s latest creative venture once again finds the visionary director playing with the subject of perspective, seeing through the lens of this liminal space between dream or illusion and reality. If Long Day’s Journey Into Night reflected on how these transparent spaces translate to cinematic storytelliing and its relationship to form, this film takes that idea and blows it wide open. I wrote in my review for Long Day’s Journey that the film, in all its abstractness, is woven around this clear sense of a gradual and persistant movement, one that is captured in this progression through the uncertain spaces in time where things are never quite right but where there is hope of finding something complete. Something real. Something transformed. And more than simply telling a story, it invites the viewer in as a subject to be part of it.

Those same themes and ideas and processes and approaches are applied here, this time given an apocalytpic proportion. Where it becomes about even one of those ideas, it similtaneously finds a way to be about all of those ideas at the same time.

In Resurrection the journey is framed by the films structure, told as it is in six parts, each revolving around a different sense (beginning with vision and ending with mind, moving through sound, taste, smell and touch). Each part is set in a particular section of Chinese film history, beginning with the silent film era and moving through to modern expressionism. Here it is as much the story of cinema, seen through the lens of the Chinese cultural imprint, as it is the story of this enigmatic figure whom dies and rises as someone new in each period (all played by the same person within the film). In fact, one of the most signficant factors of Gan’s film is the way cinema becomes a character in and of itself. Resurrection is, in a very real way, telling the story of the dying and rising form through the ages, leaving us with a very real existential question in the wake of its final composition- what do we do when cinema dies? What does cinema itself do? Will it always be resurrected?

Could there be a more timely question for the present state of the American industry, something that many of us are feeling north of the border as well where we struggle to regain a focus on our own regulations and vision for the arts and this specific form? It feels like this could be necessary viewing for anyone looking to recover some sense of what that is in a world where the artform is gradually being reduced to a war of content and politics.

Gan leaves an unsettled and largly haunting sense of potential paths or futures lingering in the backdrop of the films historical narrative, but this isn’t devoid of hope. This isn’t hyperbolic doom scrolling through the inevitable collapse of all things. It’s also not being told through an american lens, thus it is bringing its own set of questions to the table regarding its examination of this universal language. In some sense it wants the liminal space it is creating, between what we hope for and what is in a world that is hard and where suffering is ever present and where death appears to have a final word on beauty, to bleed out into the functional questions of our own lives. If we are trying to locate where this character called cinema is in the course of this film, to make sense of its arc through the history the film is telling, we are, in a very real sense, looking to locate ourselves as well. As silent film in all of its potential starts to disintegrate in front of our eyes, giving way to the technology that drives the form forward into a new era of film theory, where do we root ourselves? Where does the truth persist outside of this aimless thing we might call “progress?” What is this thing called cinema and what language does it speak? Is it still, as it was born into this world as, a visual form? Can we detach it from the embodiment that we as viewers give it in relationship to the “experience” of the artistic creation? Some of the most startling images here involve the disintegration of that embodied form. The erosion of that interconnectedness.

It’s a fundamental question regarding the nature of cinema, and given that the history of the modern world follows this history, it raises fundamental questions regarding the nature of modernism and film. Where the film really digs in is seeing both of these things as affectijng our understanding of the nature of our own humanity. All of these things get intertwined. The death of cinema is always the death of ourselves. The question thus posed is one that can only get told through the act of mythtelling. Or it’s more accurate phrasing, Truth-Telling.

What Truth is underlying modernism? An age where the line between technology and experience is not only getting blurred, but reconstituted as a disembodied form- where we become products of progress. Wherein do we locate the form, the art, that becomes the question when it comes to telling a different narrative. And if Gan is emblemetic of the forms power to transform, regardless of the grip modernism holds, this is a celebration of that marriage between form and experience, the very thing that gives us the capacity to know anything at all. And one of the things that historical memory can awaken, in this case through the history of cinema, is that the way forward through such history is always through the necessary embodiment that connects form and experience to place. That’s the real magic trick here, something that sneaks its way through the overarching narrative and hits so powerfully in that final sequence- that while we are watching the story of cinema unfold, we are in fact watching our own story unfold. It’s one of the most startling meta-elements I’ve seen captured in a long time, where we see cinema looking at the world looking at the cinema has created on screen, and suddenly we realize that this character named cinema is interpreting us, sitting there watching this film. That’s the real power of the films lingering questions.

I’m always a bit cautious when it comes to giving too much weight to surveys. Why? Because I have participated in them myself. I’m not even sure how much I trust myself to answer the questions in a reliable or relevant fashion. I’m also very aware that no single survey can say much on its own. Which is why serious researchers look at a cross section of data over time and using different methods and look at a wide cross section of cultures and contexts when they study any given trend.

But one can still accept that they are able to say something of interest, enough so to merit noted discussion. This past week one such survey made the headlines, funded by Thriftbooks and available through Talker Research using a process verfied through the Transparency Initiative through the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR).

The central focus of the survey was gauging peoples awareness of and feelings about the time they spend online. If you look through the quesitons (35 of them if I am correct), they are intentionally drawing a distinctive between analogue and digital choices, framing it in multiple choice options that seek to gain some sense of the ways those surveyed tend to see their realtionship to the online world.

The clickbait headlines are quite clear about what we are supposed to see as the most shocking takeaway- Gen Z is leading the way in unplugging. Now, I suspect there could be a larger historical trend at play here. It at least seems to be true to say that every younger generation leads the way in rejecting the world they’ve been handed. I have to think this plays a role.

Likewise, survey’s like this, particularly when it comes to younger voices, do get tricky as those younger voices are far more prone to following trends and adopting rhetoric than the more established lives of those who are older. Thus it probably shouldn’t be as shocking or suprsing as it looks to record the answers that they got.

Further, it would also be true too to say that the older the cross section gets (in this case it is 2000 responses being divided up) the more likely it is that people have already made this choice (in a generalizing sense, not a totalizing sense). Thus they are far less likely to be saying they need to do this (disconnect).

And as it is with anything and everything, the shape of generations/persons and the shape of society/culture are interconnected in ways that cannot reduce the conversation to matters of mere choice. Given all of this I think its reasonable to use caution when rushing to label any generation, and these headlines seem to indicate more of a predisposed need to justify Gen Z against conceptions that they are often looked down upon.

What I do think such conversations can open up though is thinking about matters of agency, which is very different from tendencies to use character and actions as a measure for what deems a generation good or bad. On that front, there are a couple interesting things to pull from it in my mind. And to be clear, this information is reflective of the whole, not just Gen Z.

First are the three key words that define the why or the percieved motivation for this desire to disconnect from the online world: productive, present, aware. If you look at the questions these words are intentional laden into the direction one can choose. So again, not surprising that people would be picking the words that would give a positive perception rather than a negative one. But they are strong words none the less, and if nothing else indicate that they have been put into the conversation by anyone filling the survey out. Questions I might have:

• Is the value more production? In what way do they perceive being productive? 
• in what ways are they being present with other people? To what end are they actually doing so without their phones?
• Does acknowledging or checking off a feeling lead to awareness? How might they articulate and define the problem?

The second thought would be the thing I might say I am most interested in, as trends do have an impact on culture, what the present cultural imprint or cultural voice tells us. According to the survey, of all the things people are gravitating towards notebooks and books are leading the way, with paper calendars and board games close behind. In other words, reverting to manual and physical ways of doing life and work.

It does seem that we are seeing a positive trend in the book selling world once you dig behind those statistics (important to note this doesn’t necessarily translate uniformly to an increase in sales, but rather visible shfits in specific areas, which I think is what we see in things like the previous years success of the romantisy genre, and even this years shift towards shorter books).

In maybe the most pointed statement, 77 percent stated that the older they get the more they are becoming aware about the importance of spending time in the real world. There could be all sorts of influencing factors at play here, one of the most obvious and prominant being people’s fears and anxieties over the age of AI. What is real and what is not has become a distinguishing part of the modern rhetoric (a far cry from the post modern age of my young adulthood).

Here I will add a couple of my own notes as well coming back to the suggested “shocking headline” regarding Gen Z leading the way with the highest percentages of those disconnecting. First, what would be interesting to me is understanding the relationship between people’s feelings about being online and the present face of big corporations that so much of the online world is attached to (Amazon, Google, Netflix, Apple, Facebook, ect).

It’s been well documented for a while now how Gen Z has grown up without the institutions that Gen X deconstructed and worked to dismantle. The language of institution simply isn’t part of the rhetoric in the same way that it once was. This applies to government systems as much as it does to business/corporations and the church. In my experience (so take that for what it is), when I talk to someone from the Gen Z generation or even younger (which is generally intersecting with our son, his friends, the youth at our church, the students at the school in which I work), they have very little sense of what belongs on the left and what belongs on the right. They don’t really use that language.

They do seem to have a sense of what they are experiencing, again in my lone opinion formulated from my experience, but by and large I find they don’t filter that through the systems and its rhetoric that older generations do. Instead they speak the language of influencers. Which for me has been a really interesting dynamic to dissect and explore, especially when it comes to speaking across what is a cross-cultural reality, across the language of our very different symbols.

In fact, in my honest interactions I find myself constantly surprised by some of the views I see them accepting and endorsing and some of the directions I see their philosophies taking them on a number of levels. They don’t question spirituality in the same way my generation did. AT the same time they aren’t really familiar with the church. They don’t realy know political colours. They belong to some of the first generations that have little to no connection with people involved in the past world wars. Their world has been shaped more narrowly by specific events, such 9/11 and Covid. They have largely grown up outside of family structures in educational systems where authority figures are generally non-existent. The scope of influencers aren’t so much polarizing within their antithetical opinions as returning us to an age of cult like fanaticism. The globalized world has in fact shrunk the world they occupy in some strange ways (for someone of my generation). A generation that would be seeking physical, shared spaces in an environment that has made the idea of the storefront obsolete.

I have often remarked, sometimes it feels like I’m talking to a generation that has somehow reverted to the era of my grandparents, simply without the same recognition of institutional awareness or backdrop of war. Thus, I might describe it as a very disordered version of what I hold in my memory of growing up looking across the table at those same figures.

An additional note on this front. I don’t know how much this is in the consciousness of Gen Z, but I do know it is very present for Gen X, and that is seeing an intentional shift in certain areas relating to how we engage culture, such as getting rid of kindles and switching to Kobo, a company that has made a name for itsself as the anti-Amazon brand and who supports the authors and the art (and thus is for the reader). Or doing away with audible in favour of Libro.fm, an audiobook platform that directly supports independent bookstores, that ensures you own the ebook you’ve bought, and gives money directly to the authors. We see this as well in areas such as travel, sadly in ways where the entire industry of travel has been challenging businesses in the same way that spotify has challenged musicians.

Now, this is simply a theory, but I wonder if Gen Z has the same awareness of what these kinds of shifts represent. It’s more likely that they never got in on the audible or kindle craze to begin with, as they have grown up with tiktok, youtube and netflix, two companies that have taught entire generations to see art as this singular thing called content you don’t invest in, rather its something you just consume. It’s not that they are unaware that movies exist (hello Minecraft), its that such things are not viewed as indistinguishable from antyhing else. It’s simply part of a whole. It’s not that music doesn’t exist, its that the album not a comprehensible concept, and certainly paying for any of this stuff would be completely foreign.

Thus, the importance of something like Kobo or Libro wouldn’t translate in the same way. Nor would the notion of seeing something like the movie theater as an important part of that “disconnecting.” What I seem to be picking up on in this survey is more an act of comparmentalizing, at least where it concerns the ways in which Gen Z might be answering these questions in the same way but with very different understandings of what it means. Thus it makes sense why they would pick up a physical book, or go outside, or write in a notebook. This is the avaialable analogue option that directly contrasts with the perception of the digital. Kobo? Libro? Movie theaters? These things wouldn’t provide that contrast while they certaintly do for those in my generation.

Equally so when I subscribe to something like Mubi and disconnect from Netflix, for example. Why? Because I am of the generation who’s primary act of rebellion was going after institutions. That’s what we did. Thus that is what it means to disconnect. We battle against the Amazons and the Netflix’s of the world, the monopolizing enttities driven by billionairies. For my generation we inhereted the online world as a place where we repositioned all our real world, physical hobbies into this new mode of collecting. Not initially at their expense, but as a way of documenting it. It was a wonderful time, for a moment. And then it started to consume us. And we handed that world to the next generation. And then it became an obsession and an addiction. We know this. We’ve been battling back against it long before Gen Z. Just in our own way. Gen Z has a digital world without the same noted enemies. Thus to disconnect means something very different.

Some of my thoughts anyways. As with anything, surveys like this tend to tap into two essential things- the particular shape of the present culture and world, and universal truths that one would think is inherent to any and every cultural moment. Reconnecting with the physical world seems intuitively attached to the latter. If nothing else (and for the record, and a completely anecdotal observation, my son, part of the Gen Z generation, laughed at the survey results and said there is no way that’s honest), it has the potential to open up healthy and helpful conversation. At least once we get past the headlines.

I mentioned this in a previous post, but this year both my Church and I am working through the Gospel of Mark (every year my Church works through a different Gospel beginning with Christmas and moving through Lent and Easter).

What has struck me in the beginning chapter is how this Gospel’s penchant for jumping straight into an already moving story fit well with my journey through the book of Numbers in 2025. The commentary I used for Numbers was the phenomenal recent entry into the Tyndale Old Testament series by Peter Altmann and Caio Peters. They talk about how their preferred title (which ultimately just went with Numbers) was “In the Wilderness.” But more than this theme, one of the defining traits of Numbers is its emphasis on the journey in the wilderness. It is a story of a people on the move in the inbetween space that is this wilderness, slavery on one side and the promised land on the other.

For the Gospel According to Mark, I’ve been using James R. Edwards’ commentary with the Pillar New Testament series. In it he emphasizes the intentional pacing of this Gospel matching this equal theme of being “on the way.” Everything in Mark is framed be movement between spaces, beginning “in the wilderness” (1:4) and culminating in this final statment, “go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee.” Although its largely considered to be later additions, I also really like the shorter ending, evidenced in at least one source:

And all that had been commanded them they told briefly to those around Peter. And afterward Jesus himself sent out through them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.

I’m reminded here too of Kaitlin B Curtice’s Everything Is a Story : Reclaiming the Power of Stories to Heal and Shape Our Lives, and how she speaking of stories, be it ours or be it anything (everything is a story) being born into a plot that is already on its way. The way Mark jumps straight into the narrative feels largely like how it is that we come into this world. Our stories, as all stories do, begin with someone else telling it from the perspective of our particular narrative breaking into theirs. 

This past sunday my church was in chapter 2, and I’ve really been ruminating on a couple of insights, both from the morning and from the commentary:

• Edwards talks about how the greek verb tenses in this passage help structure the narrative of chapter 2, which tells the story of the paralytic being lowered through the roof of the house to get to Jesus. He describes it as “an older story being introduced in the present tense (2:3-11) that Mark frames by an introduction and conclusion (2:1-2/12). One of the key things this structure reveals is the audience of the story- the introduction “So many gatherred around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them (verse 2),” culminates in “And he stood up, and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying “We have never seen anything like this!” As my pastor pointed out, the word for amazed is the same word used to describe their encounter with the empty tomb in 16:8, the final verse of the Gospel.
• If, then, the focus of this narrative in Mark chapter 2 is on the crowd, or the “them,” or the “so many,” it is interesting then to think about what Mark is doing with this image. So often we jump straight to the scribes in the story whom are raising questions about Jesus’ actions. What is this passage wanting to say about and/or to the crowd? Here both my commentary and my pastor brought some insights. First, where is the crowd positioned? In front of the door. What’s the implication? They are blocking the way to Jesus, as the story suggests. In their own fervor to get to Jesus they have their backs turned to those who need Jesus. Second, what does Jesus see when they are lowering the man who needs Jesus through the roof? It says he sees “their faith.” One of the things my Pastor pointed out in relating these two things- the people blocking the way and the people lowering the man, is that it raises the question of how it is our faith acts on behalf of those around us. Something the crowd is neglecting by having their backs turned to the world that exists behind them. In fact, Edwards sees this is a common theme in Mark, where the term crowd is made synonymous with passivity, with the single most common outcome being that they obstruct the way to or access to Jesus.
• Even more interesting to add the note from Edwards that house (oikos) and crowd (ochlos) funciton as an alliterative rhyme used to indicate those inside and those outside.
• Another interesting note is what Jesus is doing with the crowd when they block the entrance to the house- Jesus is preaching the word to them (verse 2). This connects back to the initial descriptive of Jesus in 1:14, where he is proclaiming the good news of God- the person and story of Jesus. No surprise then that this story is all about Jesus’ identity. Here he is doing something only God can do- forgive sins. An act that is intimately tied to the restoration of this paralyzed man’s body. For any Jewish reader, they would have understood this to be a sign that the fullness of time, or the arrival of God’s kingdom was upon them.
• Edwards’ notes that the house Jesus arrives at in verse 1 (“it was reported that he was at home”) seems to be connected to the previous mention of “home” in 1:29, which is Peter’s house. There home is paralelled with “synagogue.” Edwards argues that the imagery Mark is looking to convey here is intentional, which is using this house to convey an image of the temple. This is akin to Jesus teaching in the temple with its description of the inner and outer courts. Thus already the foreshadowing looms large in Mark, making the clear interest of his Gospel, moving so furiously towards the climax of the death and resurrection, front and center.

“It was not the original sight of if that brought him Joy but the remembrance of having seen it- a memory that overwhelmed him with “desire; but desire for what?” (Between Interpretation and Imagination: C.S. Lewis and the Bible by Leslie Baynes)

For Lewis, the experience of Joy as virtue and Joy as person were, if not synonymous, held together as a working metaphor for the other. In this particular quote the author is speaking about the way in which both things are held together by memory.

Our lives are memory.

Thus, as it was with Lewis, to think back today on an anniversary of 21 years of marriage is not to recover a single moment but to re-encounter that living, breathing memory of both Joy and Joy that continues to overwhelm.

It is not that I remember meeting the lovingly named Jennzie for the first time, athough it is true to say this still feels as vividly aware as it did all those years ago to find that face that captivated me and drew me across the room in a desperate attempt to know and discover the person to whom it belonged. It is that I remember experiencing that moment. I remember what it was to feel that moment when I first saw and was captured by the person who became my wife. That is what sustains the story that I get to continue tell of the one who broke in and changed my life.

What is equally true is the latter part of that quote. If this story of Joy brought Lewis to a greater awareness of that which he desires, it is through the person of Joy that he was brought closer to the Truth can hold both in necessary relationship. For Lewis the answer to what is Truth was that enigmatic word: Love. A Love he understood to be illuminated by his profound and sustained belief in the revealed Love that is God. An argument he would go on to make “from Desire,” an argument that has been having a kind of renaissance as of late. An argument that makes sense to me on days such as this where I am compelled to wonder even as I am overwhelmed by such things as beauty and grace, things we find only in relationship to the world we encounter. Things that get embodied in such a thing as “a marriage.” A lost language these days, and yet something that still sits at the core of what drives our Desire- the marriage of all things to Truth.

For me, celebrating this anniversary is a gratefulness for the one who continues to awaken that Desire for Love and Wonder and Truth.

Happy anniversary to my Joy

“Theater started with the sacred and eventually brought in the profane. Cinema started with the profane and brought in the sacred.” (The Wages of Cinema, Crystal Downing)

In the book Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, Mircea Eliade defines the nature of the sacred as “differentiation” and defines the profane as “homogeneity.” It is in these terms, according to Eliade, that the sacred sanctifies the profane.

Eliade also notes that the sacred itself isn’t held captive to such differentiation, rather its nature reflects the movement of the sacred into the world. A movement that begins with a cosmic Truth at its canter and which moves out through the stories that shape our world and the people and places that occupy them.

For Dorothy Sayers, the figure Downing is setting this book in conversation with, this is precisely how she imagines the creative act binding us to the Divine source that is God. Thus what we find in our differences is the active outflow of the sacred by way of our participation in this cosmic Truth. It is in and of itself a primary way of knowing. Which is why Downing also suggests that the question of how we create is more important than the question of what we are, as these things are intimately bound together

What I found interesting about pairing the ideas of these two authors is the way this observation of the parallel but opposite trajectories of theater and film is that this reflects a historical transition on the cultural front- from theater to film as the dominant cultural language. If this is the case, the question I’ve been pondering is, how does the profane, so defined as homogeneity, inform this transition? In what ways does it inform this historical shift in our creative language, and in what ways has the reclamation of the sacred sanctified the profane within this historical reality?

Questions I’m going to be sitting with as a finish Downing’s book.

I’ve got a confession to make. And perhaps in the iconic words of Dave Grohl, “I’m your fool.” Perhaps, but while the month of January often gets labeled the annual dumping ground for films stuidos don’t think will succeed elsewhere, that get auomatically written off by critics and don’t get seen by audiences, I have always had a quiet affection for this time of year. And here is my reasoning:

1. Typically it’s when we get the expansion of Oscar hopefuls. This January that includes:
   All Thats Left of You (Jordanian entry for best international film at the academy awards)
   Is This Thing On (Bradley Cooper’s follow up to Maestro)
   Dead Man’s Wire (hostage film by Gus Van Sant, his first narrative feature since Don’t Worry, He won’t Get Far on Foot (2018)
   Choronolgy of Water (Kristen Stewart’s Directorial debut)
   No Other Choice (new and much celebrated film from master filmmaker Park Chan-Wook
   Testament of Anne Lee (the Norwegian filmmaker’s buzzy musical)
   Sound of Falling (German Director Mascha Schilinksi’s anticipated period drama)
   Arco (Cited as one of the best animated films of the year from Ugo Bienvenu)
   Resurrection (indie sci-fi about an eternal time zone and structured around chapters framed by the six senses- from the Director of It Follows)
2. Typically it’s a month where most of the films being released are original films. This January includes:
   Primate (the newest from 47 Meters Down Director Johannes Roberts, which is already being talked about as a genuine surprise)
   Charlie the Wonderdog (another good boy movie about a dog in peril, this one an animated film by debut Director Shea Wageman)
   Night Patrol (if you missed Ryan Prows Lowlife, the VHS Director is back with a new thriller about the never ending conflict between law enforcement and government task forces and the secrets that can plague a neighborhood)
   Clika (quirky and oddball Director Michael Greene explores the idea that there are no shortcuts to living your dreams, especially when you are a small town musician looking to find success)
   Mercy (probably one of the more anticipated titles of January from Russian Director Timur Bekmambetov- the tag line is 90 minutes to prove your innocence or face your execution)
   Send Help (In case you missed it, Sam Raimi is back with a new horror film)
   Shelter (It’s January, so there has to be a new Jason Stathom film- here you go)
   Iron Lung (Youtuber making movies- no one should be surprised, and it actually looks kind of bonkers)
   The Love that Remains (for those looking for a more straightforward comedy-drama, a new icelandic drama that looks like it will be entertaining)
   H is for Hawk (one of my most anticipated of the month, a new drama from Philippa Lowthorpe, whom made Misbehavior)
   The Choral (The Lady in the Van is a hidden gem from 2015. Director Nicholas Hytner is back with a film starting Ralph Fiennes about a based on a true story World War 1 drama, following the healing power of a British Choral society in the midst of the darkness)
   The Mother and the Bear (Anticipated film from Canadian Director Johnny Ma already with celebrated grades that looks to be a solid emotional drama)
3. It’s a month not just of awards season hopefuls and new originals, its usually, from my perspective, dominated by solid 3 or 3.5 star films that are the bread and butter of a full year of cinema. And back in the day it usually meant the hustle and bustle giving way to less crowds, which used to be a nice reprieve between the prestige of the fall and the December frenzy on one side and the lead up to the summer season. Somehow summer as now evolved from what once was June pushing back into May, and then April, and now you might as well just say it starts in February given the way everything is now fighting for the windows that might give lead to the money. It’s a different time, but it only makes January that much distinct.

I would be remiss if I didn’t make a shout out to the sequel to the surprise hit Greenland (Greenland 2). Probably the biggest ticket item, but I think its a great fit for the early winter days.

“The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” (Mark 1:1)

What’s in a word. In this case the Greek word arche, translated as “beginning.” Turns out quite a bit. 

According to biblical scholar James R. Edwards, the formal introduction to the Gospel of Mark takes the common course of patterned ancient writings of using its opening line as a means of “treating the first subject discussed.” As he suggests, this first line could be considered the working title. This follows in the pattern of Genesis and Hosea, where the first word (the beginning, or arche) is meant to act as the focal point that opens everything else into view.

The beginning.

Edwards connects this patterned form or structure by way of the authors intention to both evoke the notion of “remembering” or memory (this is what God has done) and the notion of principle or origin (this is what God is doing). Not only does this memory connect back to Genesis and the prophets, it incorporates “the whole Gospel” into a present, living, breathing reality.

In this way it is not simply the beginning of a “temporal sequence” in relationship to Jesus’ life and ministry, it is the beginning of a new reality born out of Jesus’ fulfillment. It brings together both the end of the story and beginning of a new one into this biography of the life and ministry of the “Son of God.”

“For Mark the introduction of Jesus is no less momentous than the creation of the world, for in Jesus a new creation is at hand.” (Edwards, page 2)

In this way, the Gospel is not a book but a story. A story which, in its ancient context, uses a word (evangelion) which was commonly used to report victory from the battlefield, to state that a new reality has been brought about. The original hearers would have conjured up this picture as the story was being performed, which is how it would been presented. What’s interesting here is that in the ANE the word is always used in the plural. In the case of the N.T. Gospels and letters it is always used in the singlular. (Edwards, page 4) Meaning, it evokes the singular “breaking in” of Gods saving work.

In other words, a new age has dawned in which we find “the beginning” of the fulillment. And to enter into the story the Gospel according to Mark is telling is to to enter into a story which finds us (and Jesus and the disciples) “on the way.” In the context of the story of Israel, which this would have been conjuring up, this is a portrait that imagines us as both occupying the wilderness and equally being on the move.

This is the reason for the incessant and robust and frenzied movement that colours the whole of Mark’s Gospel. For the author, we are essentially being thrust into a story that has already started, akin to arriving at a movie 15 minutes late, albeit as one who knows the beats already having been immersed in Torah. Thus the entirety of Mark’s literary structure is meant to be seen as a parallel movement to our own. It begins with the end, which is itself a beginning. The beginning of our story in this new creation reality that we find “in Christ.”

Author Kaitlin B. Curtice writes in her book Everything Is a Story: Reclaiming the Power of Stories to Heal and Shape Our Lives, that we are all born into the middle of a story. We emerge in something that is already “in play.” And yet part of the reality surrounding our participation in this story is this intuitive sense that “somewhere somehow a story is born.” As stories did in the ancient world (and arguably today), they begin with the cosmic picture in which this question reflects a working tension. A universe “in time” and yet also necessarily infinite. Stories don’t stay in the cosmic sense of origins, they move from the cosmic into taking the particular shape of the stories contained within. In this sense the story is someting external to us. In the words of Curtice, it is alive. It is an embodied, living, breathing thing. And yet we are also somehow part of it. Thats the wonder of it all.

In David Rhoads commentary, Mark as Story: An Introduction to the Narrative of a Gospel, he describes it in the following way

As a result of our emphasis on the cosmic conflict, we shift the interpretive center of gravity from the end of the story to the beginning of the story. (Rhoads, page 2)

For the author of the Gospel according to Mark this should “shatter the customary way of seeing the world and invites hearers to embrace another, thus impelling them to action.” As mentioned already, in its original context this would have been recieved as oral storytelling, and to thus “hear” this story, something reflected in the form and structure of this Gospel, is to “enter another world” by way of our senses in a way that not only changes us, but actively moves us, animates us. That invites us not only to see the characters within the story but to find ourselves as characters in the story. This would have been the formative aspect of such storytelling in the ancient world. It is assumed that we are to become the performers in this story so that it might begin to unveil were we find ourselves in our own.  That is the power of beginning where a story ends. This recasting of “the beginning” as an invitation to step in “on the way,” is what informs our place as performers in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

I recently finished the book Conversation on Faith (Martin Scorsese and  Antonia Spadaro) where he reflects on his own story as a “storyteller” on the cinematic front. He talks about once thinking about becoming a priest, and arrives at a similar sentiment regarding how it is that we relate to the Gospel of Jesus Christ:

“We try to find endings for our stories that give form to life as we all live it. Stumbling along, I realize I might be creating pictures that lead to more questions, more mysteries… A question formed and came into being. The question… What does Christ want from us?” (page 125, p128)

He calls this the immediacy of Jesus. The way the story of Jesus informs the whole of life, of our stories, is by embodying the everyday nature of its experience. Always asking that necessary question- “What does Christ want from us?” Two words ring out in the opening chapter of the Gospel of Mark in response: repent (turn and begin moving in a different direction towards Jesus) and believe (live into that new way of seeing and being in the world shaped by the “Gospel”, or the singular “fulfillment”). Both words caught up in Jesus’ invitation to “follow me.” This is what frees us to step into the story at the beginning, a beginning that starts at the end and yet is also already in motion as a story of new beginnings. As Scorsese puts it, it really all comes down to one word: grace. No matter where we find ourselves in this story, it is informed by grace. That is the good news- God has acted in fulfilling the story, we are thus free to act in living out this story.

The goal for me heading into a new year is never an exhaustive reading plan or “to read” list. It’s simply locating a place to start. I find most of the time this emerges from the natural outflow of where my reading year in 2025 brought me. What themes and stories and directions it finds me moving towards. I outlined that in a previous post in this space:https://thestoriesofmylife.ca/2025/12/30/end-of-the-year-reflections-the-story-of-my-reading-journey-in-2025/

Here I am simply looking at some specific first steps to begin fleshing that out in terms of titles to kick off the year:

Beginning where I usually do every January with the next book in Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold series. Which sadly is going to be the final one (Before We Forget Kindness). This is a series about looking backwards and assessing the past, so it always feels like a perfect fit for the early January months.

I usually pull out a book I’ve been saving for the winter season as well. This year its a book by Canadian and local Winnipeg author S.M. Beiko, Scion of the Fox: The Realms of Ancient. Its a mix of fantasy and mytholog and historical setting that I’ve been anticipating getting to. Now is the time. I am pairing that with Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May and the fantasy Where the Dark Stands Still by A.B. Poranek (fitting as well for the long dark days of the season.

The final week of 2025 also happened to offer something that feels tailer made for me- Phaedra Patrick’s The Time Hop Coffee Shop. Coffee and time travel. I’m sold.

I’m also trying to tackle some sequels, which include The Wild Robot Escapes (Peter Brown), Twighlight Falls and Summmers End (both new installments in the Shady Hollow series by Juneau Black), the follow up to Once a Queen, Once a Castle (Garrick Hall #2) by Sarah Arthur, who is quickly becomming an all time favorite author of mine, and the The Book Womans Daughter by Kim Michele Richardson (the follow up to The Book Women of Troublesome Creek)

I’ll also be looking to get my hands on the newest from Ransom Riggs (The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Barry), a book I did not even know existed and was brought to my attention after seeing that the sequel is coming out this next year.

The new year is usually finishing up books I’m currently in the middle of reading as well, which include Martin Scorsese with Antonio Spadaro (Conversations on Faith), Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy, and my long (or slow) read for the year, Mark Twain by Ron Chernow.

On that same front, I will be starting a new slow read once I finish with Chernow’s massive biography, Circle of Days by Ken Follet (I have a long standing fascination with Stonehenge). And later in the year I will likely be starting the equally sizeable King Sorrow by Joe Hill

In preparation for the biography on L.M. Montgomery by Jane Urquhart, I’ll be reading her books The Blue Castle and Emily of New Moon

One of the places 2025 brought me is to rediscovering the power of story. On that front I picked up Hwang Bo-Reum’s Every Day I Read, I’ve started the book Everything is a Story by Kaitlin B Curtice. I also wrote about this interest in a previous blog post here, but one of the things I have paired that with is looking into this recent trend on recovering th art of letter writing. I picked up Virginia Evans The Correspondent, and I’ve paired that with Syme’s Letter Writer by Rachel Syme as a place to start.

As a connective piece, given that my church is travelling through the Gospel of Mark this year (every year its a different Gospel), I have started the book Mark as Story: An Introduction to the Narrative of the Gospel by David Rhoads, and have paired that with James R. Edwards commentary The Gospel According to Mark.

There’s been a resurrgence in Lewis and Tolkien scholarship as of late, and this year I’ll be digging into The Way of Dante: Going Through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven with C.S. Lewis, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Charles Williams. by Richasrd Hughes Gibson and Between Interpretation and Imagination: C.S. Lewis and the Bible by Leslie Baynes.

I’ve had a handful of recommends (I love getting recommneds and read anything anyone passes my way) that I failed to get to before the end of the year. They include Septology by Jon Fosse, No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister, Ad Limina by Cyril Jones-Kellett, and Staricase in the Woods by Chuck Wending.

Since I spent 2025 with a book called How To Write Your Story, and actually made some progress, a book called The Gospel of You: Start Telling Your Story by Thomas Roberts caught my attention. Felt like a good one to pair with Never Too Old To Save The World: A Midlife Calling Anthology by John F Allen. In an odd way, I came across a book called Reversing Entropy by Luci Shaw that feels like it fits, especially in this winter season as I approach 50.

I also have a number of classics waiting to be tackeled. Mrs. Dalloway (Virginia Woolf) and Clara Callan (Richard B. Wright) are probably highest on the list.

On the Canadian/Local front (which I was excited to do well in through the 2025 year), I have Ship of Dreams by Donna Jones Alward, Strangers at the Red Door by Dennis Bock, Portage and Main: How an iconic intersection shaped Winnipeg’s history, politics, and urban life by Sabrina Janke, and Canada’s Main Street: The Epic Story of The Trans-Canada Highway by Craig Baird.

On the theology front, aside from the Gospel of Mark and C.S. Lewis I have three books I’m excited to dig into right now. That includes The Vision of Ephesians, the latest from N.T. Wright, Augustine the African by Catherine Conybeare, and The Girl Who Baptized Herself: How a Lost Scripture About a Saint Named Thecla Reveals the Power of Knowing Our Worth by Meggan Watterson.

On the travel front (because I always like to have a travel book on the go, be it a travelogue or other, The Bridge Between Worlds: A Brief History of Connection by Gavin Francis, and Imagine a City: A Pilots Journey Across the Urban World by Mark Vanhoenacker.

As always, there is a ton of new books coming out in 2026, and I’m super exicted to see where it all takes me. But this is a place to start, and I’m eager to kick it all off.